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Austria  Artifact

Desecrated Torah scrolls

These Torah scrolls, one from a synagogue in Vienna and the other from Marburg, were desecrated during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. The pogrom occurred throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The scrolls pictured here were retrieved by German individuals and safeguarded until after the war.